Hundreds of BART riders put a test model of the Bay Area transportation agencys fleet of the future through its paces at the Pleasant Hill Station Saturday.

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The three-car test train came complete with brightly colored seats, six display monitors with real-time maps and three doors per car instead of the current two the latter meant to get passengers on and off the train more quickly.

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Overnight testing for the train should start in the next two weeks, said Paul Oversier, assistant general manager for BART, with daytime runs starting in December and tests with passengers starting in early 2017.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY (BCN) Members of the public Saturday got an opportunity to check out new BART train cars that are part of the transit agencys Fleet of the Future that is expected to start taking passengers early next year.

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BART brought three new train cars to the Pleasant Hill/Contra Costa Centre station Saturday for the first of four open house events.

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The new cars, built by Bombardier Transit Corp. in Plattsburgh, New York, have been tested at BARTs Hayward maintenance complex since earlier this year and 10 are expected to be available for use by the public by sometime early next year after they are certified for service by the California Public Utilities Commission, Oversier said.

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Bombardier is expected to provide 60 more of the new cars by the end of 2017 and a total of 1,081 by the end of 2021, which combined with the current fleet of 669 cars would increase the number of BART train seats by 49 percent.

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Oversier said comments from the public at open houses like Saturdays and at other outreach events in recent years about the new fleet have been helpful in determining the design of the cars.

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The locations of poles for passengers to hold onto and increased access for wheelchair users were among the changes brought about by the publics input, he said.

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With the new trains, BART is also looking to move away from associating the lines with their endpoints, such as the SFO-Pittsburg/Bay Point line, and instead associate them with their color on the BART map, Oversier said.

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The front of the train will highlight the color of the route, as will the digital interior screens, which also feature next stop information.

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Its easier for people that are not familiar, not daily riders, to relate to a given color when they look at a map, Oversier said.

Aside from a design overhaul, BART says that the new fleet will be quieter, cooler, more comfortable, and easier to enter and exit than the current trains running throughout the Bay Area system. BART has also introduced a mapping feature that will let riders know exactly where they are at any time as well as installing a digital display on each car to signal what station is coming next.

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The soon-to-be-introduced trains do have four less seats per car, but more cars will be used on each train, BART said. A grand total of 1,081 cars are set to be unveiled by 2021, which would increase BART’s seating capacity by 49 percent.

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Once the testing process, which has reached an 82 percent completion mark as of Saturday, is finished and the California Public Utilities Commission has given the green light, BART plans to role out the fleet as soon as possible.